Helsreach

Grimaldus watched Helsreach

erupting in fury.

They came through the morning clouds, fat-bellied troop landers that streaked with fire from atmospheric entry and the damage they had sustained breaking through the orbital defences.

Burning hulks juddered as their boosters fired, slowing them before they ploughed into the ground. They came from the horizon, or descended from stretches of cloud cover far from the city. Those few that sailed overhead, close enough for the city's defence platforms to reach, were subjected to horrendous battery fire, destroyed with such swift force that flaming wreckage rained upon the city below.

He stood with his command squad, fists resting on the edge of the battlements, watching the bulk landers coming down in the northern wastelands. Imperial fighters of all classes and designs flitted between the sedate troop ships, unleashing their payloads to minimal effect. The ships were too big for fighter-scale weapons to make any significant difference. As more alien scrapships broke the poison-yellow cloud cover, xenos fighter craft descended with their motherships. Barasath and his Lightning squadrons engaged these, punching them out of the air like buzzing insects.

Across the city, almost drowned out by the booming rage of the battlement guns, a siren wailed between automated announcements that demanded every soul take up arms and man their appointed positions.

The walls.

During the opening phase, Helsreach's defenders would stand upon the city's walls and be ready to repel an archaic siege. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and militia, standing vigil on walls that were as tall as a Titan.

Several bold ork drop-ships sought to land within the city. Spiretop platforms, wall guns and cannon batteries mounted upon the tops of towers annihilated those that made the attempt. The luckier failures managed to climb with enough altitude to escape the city's reach and crash on the wastelands. Most were torn apart by unrelenting weapons fire, pulled apart and cast to the ground in flames.

Guard units stationed throughout the hive and preselected for the duty moved in on the downed hulks, slaughtering any alien survivors. Across the city, fire containment teams worked to put out blazes that spread from the crashing junkers.

Grimaldus looked along the walls to either side, where thousands of uniformed men stood in loose groups, every one clad in the ochre of the Armageddon Steel Legion. These were not Sarren's own 101st. The colonel's regiment remained at the command centre, as well as being spread across the city in platoons to defend key areas.

Artarion's words still burned behind the Chaplain's eyes.

'Brothers,' he spoke into the vox. 'To me.'

The knights drew closer - Nerovar watching the distant landings without a word; Priamus, his blade already in his hands, resting on one pauldron; Cador, projecting a sense of implacable patience; Bastilan, grim and silent; and Artarion, holding Grimaldus's banner, the only one of them without his helmet. He seemed to enjoy the uncomfortable glances he received from the human soldiers as they saw his shattered face. Occasionally, he'd grin at them, baring his metal teeth.

'Helm on,' Grimaldus said, the words emerging from his vocaliser as a low growl. Artarion complied with a chuckle.

'We must speak,' Grimaldus said.

'You have chosen a curious moment to realise that,' Artarion said. The wall shivered beneath their feet again as the turrets unleashed another volley at an alien scrap-cruiser shaking the sky overhead.

'The city has awoken to its duty,' Grimaldus intoned. 'It is time I did the same.'

The knights stood and watched as xenos landers touched down on the plains several kilometres from the city. Even from this distance, the Templars could make out hordes of greenskins spilling from the grounded ships, mustering on the wastelands.

Reports clashed with each other over the vox, telling of similar landings being made to the east and west of the city.

'Speak,' Grimaldus demanded in the face of his brothers' silence.

'What would have us say, Reclusiarch?' asked Bastilan.

'The truth. Your perceptions of this doomed crusade, and the way it is being led.'

The ork ship that had passed overhead minutes before now came down in the wasteland with slow, grinding, earthshaking force. It ploughed into the dusty ground, throwing up a trail of dust in its wake, and Helsreach shook to its foundations.

A cheer went up along the wall - thousands of soldiers crying out at the sight.

'We hold the largest city on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers,' Cador said, 'as well as countless experienced Guard and militia officers. And we have Invigilata.'

'Your point?' Grimaldus asked, watching the crashed ship burn. 'Do you think that will be even half of what we would need to repel the siege that we'll soon suffer?'

'No,' Cador replied. 'We are going to die here, but that is not my point. My point, brother, is that the city has a command structure already in place.'

Bastilan pitched in. '

You are

not a general, Grimaldus. And you were not sent here to be one.'

Grimaldus nodded, his mind flashing back from the fire on the wastelands, snapping into recollections of the endless command staff meetings when the mortals had requested his presence.

He had thought it was his duty to be present, to grasp the full situation facing the hive. When he said these words to his brothers, he was answered with curses and smiles.

The Chaplain watched the greenskin swarm growing in size as more landers came down. The alien vessels darkened the sky, such was their number. Like steel beetles, they infested the wastelands in every direction, disgorging hosts of xenos warriors.

'It

was

my duty to study every soul, every weapon, every metre of this hive. But I have erred, brothers. The High Marshal did not send me here to command.'

'We know,' Artarion said softly, his skin tingling at the change in Grimaldus's tone. He sounded almost himself again.

'Until this moment, until I looked upon the enemy myself, I had not resigned myself to dying here. I was… enraged… with Helbrecht for damning me to this exile.'

'As were we all,' Priamus said, his voice rich with the sneer he wore on his face. 'But we will carve a legend here, Reclusiarch. We will make the High Marshal remember the day he sent us here to die.'

Good words, Grimaldus thought. Fine words.

'He will always recall that day. It is not he who must be forced to remember the Helsreach Crusade.' The Chaplain nodded out to the massing army. 'It is them.'

Grimaldus looked to his left, then his right. The Steel Legion stood in organised ranks, watching the mass of enemies coming together on the plains. When his own gaze returned to the foe, he couldn't help a smile creeping its way across his features.